a blog on being a baba, parenting, and politics

Posts tagged “superpowers”

This blog comes after a week of difficult nights (and bizarre local politics). Collin has not been sleeping well — like consistently having 4 hour bedtime routines (8 pm – 12 am!) and still waking up (sometimes with nightmares) in the middle of the night. It’s been, what’s the word, exhausting and a test of endurance.

Then, the other night as I was picking him up from pre-school, one of his classmates got hurt. Immediately, he stopped, got really concerned, and wanted to know if she was okay. That’s when a little of this tension melted away. “Breathe… it’s going to be okay,” I thought to myself. It just reminded me of his (super)power of deeply feeling. As an awesome autistic, he has greater sensory at all levels, a power he has yet to fully harness, but a superpower nonetheless. It reminded me….

Before I start, I just wanted to lift up all the courageous voices that have shared such personal and painful #metoo stories of sexual violence and toxic masculinity. It has given me pause to reflect on myself, the work i need to do and also how to raise a feminist autistic son. There is so much to be done and so much trauma. Until we dismantle and transcend patriarchy and the many systems of oppression, I know as a cis man, I’m perpetuating these systems everyday.

This and many other things lately have made me think a lot about how to behave under capitalism. Ultimately there are good behaviors we want to see in society like love, kindness, compassion, humility, cooperation, and mutuality, to name a few. Sure, when the revolution comes these behaviors may be more natural. And yes, it is not just about behavioral change, it is about transformation but lets be real even after the revolution we will need some good behavior and rigor.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot because of Collin. As an austistic, he is receiving ABA (Applied Behavior Analysis) therapy – basically behavioral therapy on how to understand social cues and essentially how to “pass” under capitalism. Though there are these elements of conformity, and there are a lot of criticisms of ABA (trust me), ABA has helped us a lot.